My company use to use a diesel generator when this area (Sacramento, California) used nuclear power to help with 'irregularities' in the power supply. The big problem was that it cost them $50,000 every time they fired it up because it violated the Clean Air Act and they had to get a variance. I forsee that companies will really start screaming about the Clean Air Act and trying to overturn these fines. Which will only increase the global warming problem if they are successful. Which as we see further impacts the electrical grid. This is the treadmill effect, the faster you go, the faster you have to go to keep up. Maybe it's time to slow down.
Ken Adams
-----Original Message-----
From: Carrol Cox [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Tuesday, September 12, 2000 3:35 PM
To: crl
Subject: [CrashList] [Fwd: electrical storm hits New Economy]
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: electrical storm hits New Economy
Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2000 17:01:37 -0400
From: Doug Henwood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: lbo-talk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
TheStandard.com - September 12, 2000
Electrical Storm Hits New Economy
Faced with energy shortfalls and an aging power grid, Internet
Economy companies search for solutions.
By Mark Boslet
It was a long, hot summer in the United States. Not only did record
heat waves parch much of the nation, but a mini-energy crisis struck
both coasts.
In San Diego, utility bills doubled as electricity supplies tightened
and the cost of power skyrocketed. During a mid-June heat wave,
rolling blackouts hit San Francisco and Silicon Valley. Politicians
felt the heat, too, as public anger boiled over. Finally, in early
September, California Gov. Gray Davis stepped in to cut San Diegans'
electricity rates.
Meanwhile, hot weather in the Northeast pushed New England and New
Jersey to the brink of brownouts. Many New Yorkers' summer
electricity bills jumped 40 percent; for a few days in early August,
New York's Con Edison even cut back service to business customers
such as Chase Manhattan.
In the Northwest, where cheap hydropower has historically kept
utility bills low, anemic river flows this summer have pushed up
rates. Many sawmill and mine workers lost their jobs when companies
chose to shut down rather than pay rising electric costs.
Now, with natural-gas prices high and heating oil for homes in short
supply in the East, energy prices could also soar this winter.
It wasn't supposed to be like this. Energy deregulation promised to
lead smoothly to market-driven prices and investments in new plants
and technology. Instead, it's resulted in price hikes, blackouts and
dwindling reserves. It has also spurred a frantic push for new plants
in states that for the past decade have added little new generating
capacity.
The Internet Economy is peculiarly vulnerable to shrinking power
surpluses. Digital businesses require not only massive quantities of
power, but also reliable systems: An interruption in power as
instantaneous as one-sixtieth of a second won't cause the lights to
flicker - but it will crash a computer.
Already, U.S. companies lose $50 billion in productivity each year
due to power interruptions, according to the Electric Power Research
Institute, an industry-financed research organization based in Palo
Alto, Calif. To ensure power supplies, some companies are considering
building their own generating capacity, bypassing regional power
grids altogether and evading the chaos that will likely persist for
several more years.
The climate for many companies, in short, has grown "very fearful,"
says California state Sen. Byron Sher, who represents part of Silicon
Valley. "This is a new issue for them."
The new-millennium energy crisis in the U.S. can be traced to the
effects of deregulation, a lack of new generating capacity in recent
years, and an antiquated distribution system - not to mention the
unanticipated demands of the Internet Economy. An average office
building with a computer on every desk but no significant network
facility uses between 4 and 5 watts of electricity per square foot,
according to Ed Quiroz, a regulatory analyst at California's Public
Utilities Commission. If that building has a server farm and a
network operations center, it sucks from 90 watts to 100 watts of
energy a square foot or more. Or consider this: According to Mark
Mills, an energy researcher with ties to the utilty industry, a Palm
handheld device connected wirelessly to the Internet has the appetite
of a refrigerator, consuming 1,000 kilowatt hours a year.
But estimates of the Net economy's power requirements vary. The fact
is, no one knows for sure how much demand for energy will climb in
coming years. Mills and colleague Peter Huber estimate that
businesses that rely on digital equipment - personal computers,
networking equipment, plants that produce high-tech gear and
telecommunications networks - consume 13 percent of U.S. electric
power. That figure will rise to between 30 percent and 50 percent of
the nation's energy needs by 2020.
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory scientist Jonathan Koomey says
those numbers are too high. According to his calculations, the
Internet Economy accounts for about 3 percent of total electricity
consumption in the United States.
Whatever the actual number, demand "is clearly going up faster than
most people predicted several years ago," says Mark Bernstein,
director at Santa Monica, Calif.-based think tank, Rand Corp. "I
think we're still underestimating it. We can expect the unexpected."
Also unexpected were the aftershocks of deregulation, which gathered
steam in the mid 1990s as legislatures moved to equalize broad
electric pricing disparities across the country. In the last five
years, 26 states have opened or taken steps to open some of their
markets to competition.
Unfortunately, deregulation has helped create an atmosphere of
uncertainty in the energy industry. New plant construction has slowed
as investors doubted whether they could get favorable returns on new
facilities.
What's more, the U.S. power grid, built in the 1950s and 1960s, was
not designed with the kind of reliability that the new silicon-based
economy requires.
Over the past decade, electricity-generating capacity rose 30
percent, but transmission capacity grew only 15 percent, according to
figures from the Electric Power Research Institute. A typical
business customer can depend on 99.9 percent reliability. That
translates to nine hours a year of electricity interruptions - far
too high a risk for companies that depend on the Internet or internal
networks. Internet Economy companies, the rule goes, need "six 9s":
99.9999 percent reliability.
It could get worse. Projections for the next 10 years show power
generation growing between 20 percent and 25 percent, but the
transmission grid expanding only 4 percent. It doesn't matter how
many megawatts you pump out if electricity can't flow to where it's
needed.
Some high-tech companies have taken heed. At software giant Oracle,
energy director Jeff Byron has installed a diesel generator to run
the company's worldwide data center during blackouts and to power
emergency lights, elevators and fire equipment. Oracle also has a
private transmission system with a separate power substation to
improve reliability. Byron says the company is even considering
developing its own power plant.
Web site host Exodus Communications has five facilities loaded with
high-end, energy-sucking servers in Silicon Valley and 23 around the
world. Each facility has dual lines to utility substations, backup
diesel generators and batteries to prevent power disruptions. Exodus
also is "looking very closely'' at generating its own power,
according to Jim Stoddart, senior VP of operations.
Energy shortfalls are focusing more attention on new power
technologies, such as smarter power meters that alert users to the
times of the day when power is less expensive, and "micro turbines" -
small natural- gas-fueled engines designed for individual buildings.
Also under development are hockey-puck-size silicon chips that
increase the capacity of transmission lines by as much as 40 percent.
Online exchanges could also ease power burdens by freely shifting
resources to areas of greatest demand.
Ultimately, however, the economy is growing faster than the nation's
ability to produce electricity. That means the long, hot summer of
2000 could be only a foretaste.
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